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Looking Forward to the 0th SpinachCon!
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:date: 2014-03-13 11:35
:author: Deb Nicholson
:tags: spinachcon, ux, libreplanet

If you have been reading our blog for a little while, then you already know
we love getting feedback from users. Later this month, we'll be
participating in the first ever `SpinachCon <https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/the-0th-spinachcon>`_,
a user feedback event for free software projects. The event will be
hosted at a local Cambridge makerspace called
`Industry Lab <http://industry-lab.com/>`_
the day before the Free Software Foundation's annual conference,
`LibrePlanet <https://libreplanet.org/2014/>`_.

Like many small and medium free software projects, we rely on
volunteers to fill in the gaps where a larger project would just hire
someone. We're not at all opposed to paying more people to work on
MediaGoblin. (See our in progress
`funding campaign <http://www.mediagoblin.org/pages/campaign.html>`_,
we would love, love, love to hire more people!) But before we can hire
UX experts, we still need to improve our current user
experience. Enter SpinachCon -- it's a hackfest for users. People try
the software, answer a few questions and get a free lunch in return.

We'll be joined by Hyperkitty -- a user-facing Mailman application,
`Inkscape <http://www.inkscape.org/en/>`_ -- a fantastic vector graphics editor,
and `LibreOffice <https://www.libreoffice.org/>`_ -- a free office suite. A
wide variety of projects and such esteemed company! The event takes place
on the Friday before LibrePlanet, so we'll be welcoming the folks who are
in town early to start their weekend off with a nice, easy way to
contribute to making free software more awesome. We'll also be welcoming
them with pizza, courtesy of our sponsor, the
`Open Invention Network <http://www.openinventionnetwork.com>`_.

Thanks!  Hope to see you there!

(Oh, and by the way, you have checked out our awesome
`campaign <http://www.mediagoblin.org/pages/campaign.html>`_, right?)

